Tilda Shopping

I love Tilda, and I'm so happy she's become one of my little girls.  I posted this one on the Cricut MB for the weekly color challenge and the monthly challenge.   I cleaned up an oopsie, so now she's just fine.  I used Paper Wishes specialty papers and Dazzles, and of course, my copics to color.

  

Tilda Shopping

My sisters and I were doll lovers.  We would play with paper dolls and Barbies for days on end.  Like little soap operas.   There was always tension for Ken whenever a GI Joe was around because we preferred GI Joes.  GI Joes had muscles, and they could bend and put their arm around Barbie instead of just straight out like Ken. LOL

To make our Barbies pregnant, we would tape these tiny little baby dolls that were put together by rubber bands to their stomach until the birth date.  Red yarn served as tubing for a blood transfusion.  We were an imaginative crew, and my mother's soaps sparked the inspiration.

I still have a love of dolls and paper dolls.  I used to wonder why old ladies seem to have a lot of dolls.  Now I know, not that I'm old, but I do have a hankering to play with and dress up dolls since I'm not as busy as I once was.

I fell in love with Magnolia's Tildas when I picked up my first issue of Cardmaker magazine.  Little did I know I would eventually have a small collection of my own.  I've been coloring them with copics, and when they turn out almost as beautiful as the ones I see in the magazines my heart is filled with joy, and I wish I could have that feeling every day, all the time.

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Snowman Card

I made this card for a friend of mine who's been sick.  She asked me to make her a snowman card, and so I did.

I made this card from one of my cardmaker kits from Paper Wishes.  Like I say, I can't come up with anything new, but I can follow direction.  Thank God for instructions.

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BEEN COLORING -- AND IT'S SO PRETTY!

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I like to color and wanted to get into copics but didn't feel comfortable on the MB trying to learn about a  non-PC product.  There were others who wanted the same info, so the blog, a place where I can go and make comments about my coloring projects, including copics, and a place to learn and share with and from others.

Today's project:

Can you guess what I used to color with?  Crayola 24-pk color pencils.  Yup!

I got this picture from a book of 16 stainned glass images on vellum to color called "Butterflies & Blossoms" by Dover Publications that I purchased from The Cracker Barrel restaurant.  If you've never been to Cracker Barrel, you should go, but not just to eat.  Each one has a general store where you can buy all sorts of goodies from days of yore and not so yore.

My lastest go-to book for using color pencils is "The Ultimate Guide to Colored Pencil"  by Gary Green.  I so love this book.  It covers everything you would ever want to know about using colored pencils, from the types of pencils available, to tools, to techniques, to color charts of some of the most popular brands of pencils.  It's in a hard cover binder so it lays flat and comes with a 55-minute DVD where the author leads you from start to finish on drawing and coloring a rose. 

Watching Gary on the DVD clarified techniques and terms related to colored pencils.  This was money well spent.  And improvement is immediate. 

Here are the tools and techniques I used for this project.

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White vinyl eraser

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Kneaded eraser 

Kneaded erasers are to colored pencils what colorless blenders are to Copics. They're like clay, and you can make them as large or as small as you want, small enough to get into the tiniest of spaces.  To clean the eraser you just knead it like clay,  so you can use the over and over again.  

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Light box  - Martha Stewart Craft Station

 The darker pictures have the light on my MS Craft Station turned off.

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Techniques:

In these next pictures you can see the debris left by the pencil.  You use the kneaded eraser to remove the debris, blend colors, and/or remove color.

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Working between the pencils and the erasers, you can lay as much color as you want, use the kneaded eraser to remove debris, blend, and leave a smooth, shiny finish.

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 The following are pictures at various stages of the project.  Some have been zoomed in, some are darker or lighter, some show before and/or after blending.

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The finished product is transparent (vellum), intensely colored, beautifully blended, with a smooth and shiny finish.

This project was fun, relaxing, and satisfying.  If you have any questions or comments about this project or post, please feel free to leave them.  This is a learning experience, and your comments are very helpful and encouraging.

Thanks for stopping by!